Hello, it's me, Adele. I saved the record business in 2015, selling more than 5 million copies of my album "25." But I didn't get year-end love from the Star Tribune's music critic — even though he gave me a very favorable review in November.
I guess he preferred D'Angelo in all his funky experimental weirdness, hip-hop adventurer Kendrick Lamar and that wordy Aussie, left-hand-guitar-playing indie-rocker Courtney Barnett.
I didn't tour, so I wouldn't show up on the best concerts list. Instead, the critic liked old favorites who rose to the occasion such as Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, Patti LaBelle and D'Angelo again, who has been more MIA than me. There was love, too, for Jessie J, who, like me, went to the Brit School for the Performing Arts, and Rhiannon Giddens, of whom the critic once wrote, "Whether it was field hollers, Celtic mouth music or unpublished Bob Dylan lyrics set to her own melodies, [she] sang it with goosebump-inducing authority." Bravo!
Albums of the year
1. D'Angelo and the Vanguard, "Black Messiah"
2. Kendrick Lamar, "To Pimp a Butterfly"
3. Courtney Barnett, "Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit"
4. Rhiannon Giddens, "Tomorrow Is My Turn"
5. Jason Isbell, "Something More Than Free"
